I recently heard the argument that abortion services (Planned Parenthood) should be less funded because of the people that go for multiple abortions are “doing it because it is free and easy”. I believed this was utterly wrong but I had no info to back it up. In the same conversation they also said that I could not trust ANY news source, they will just say and support what they believe which is a good point. I tried to find the information from the least biased sources I could find, one was an article by Carrie Purcell (Research Associate, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, University of Glasgow). They interviewed women in Scotland who have had multiple abortions. I will not describe the whole article to you, but I will attempt to explain the main points of the article as well as I can.

The first point the article discusses is contraception. Sometimes contraception fails, we hear that all the time. What is less talked about in news sources, from my perspective, is how terrible the side effects of birth control actually are. The ten most common symptoms, according to this article are:

Again, that is only the ten most common, there are many more that can be found here.

The next point is that domestic violence prompted some of the abortions the women in the Purcell article had. Domestic violence is another topic which I had not heard much about until college. There are some truly disturbing statistics about domestic violence that I have heard only recently. More information about domestic violence and many other topics can be found on the Mentors in Violence Prevention website.

There are some other points that are made in Carrie Purcell’s article. I understand that some people do not have the time to go jumping from article to article. So, another big take home message from the article is “Reproductive rights advocates often point out that the power to decide if and when to have a pregnancy is fundamental to gender equality”. This is a fundamental point that those against abortion, especially some of those in office, do not seem to understand.

“Another way to calculate is by the number of total patients. Recall Planned Parenthood health centers saw 2.7 million patients (men and women) in 2013. If the 327,653 abortion procedures were given to individual patients, patients who received abortions would account for 12 percent of total patients”.

If you only have time to read one article, stop reading this one and read The Washington Post article linked above and here. This article is part of a series of articles under the umbrella Fact Checker, take that as you will.

This article is obviously a biased opinion piece and I am in no way an expert on the topic. I was inspired by a statement made that I disagreed with, so I did some research and this is what came out of it.

I encourage you to leave a comment below, for or against the topic. I just request that if you make a statement, BACK IT UP with something. A lack of information and sources on my part pushed me to make this post. It was just going to be a tweet at first. I will have to moderate the comments due to a significant amount of spam I get on my posts. I will approve any opinion on the topic as long as it does not attack anyone, imply or support violence towards anyone. Be civil.

2 Comments

It takes a lot of courage to write about something as polarising and emotive as abortion. Your post, however, highlights the value of a scientific education – it has taught you to seek out and communicate the facts. Bravo! You may be interested in the podcast ‘Science vs’ and the episode regarding abortion. You mentioned domestic violence in your post. The podcast shared some alarming statistics which indicate women in violent relationships who have an abortion tend to leave the partner. Yet sadly almost all (it may have been all, I can’t remember exactly right now) who did not have a termination remained in the dangerous relationship, with child.

Thank you for your comment. I was extremely nervous about posting this, but I have some great friends who supported me, and did some editing :). I get into a lot of conversations with people who make very problematic statements such as the one that spawned this post. I would always get frustrated that I do not have the information necessary to back up my point or confidently refute an argument. Domestic violence is truly an epidemic that needs more legislation to aid those in need. Those in Mentors in Violence Prevention are great people who are drawing attention to such topics and many more! Also, thank you for your support. Do any of your students have websites or places where they post course work or other work? I would love to see work being done in other schools as well!